Carnal Innocence (2 page)

As for repressing her feelings, she was done with that. Her final, ugly blowout with Luis had been so liberating, so gloriously uninhibited, she almost wished she could go back to Baltimore and do it again.

Almost.

The past—and Luis with his clever tongue, brilliant talent, and roving eye definitely belonged to the past— was safely behind her. The future, at least until she’d recovered her nerves and her health, wasn’t of much interest. For the first time in her life, Caroline Waverly,
child prodigy, dedicated musician, and emotional sap, was going to live only for the sweet, sweet present.

And here, at long last, she was going to make a home. Her way. No more backing away from problems. No more cowed agreeing to her mother’s demands and expectations. No more struggling to be the reflection of everyone else’s desires.

She was moving in, taking hold. And by the end of the summer, she intended to know exactly who Caroline Waverly was.

Feeling better, she replaced her hands on the wheel and eased the car down the lane. She had a vague recollection of skipping down it once, on some long-ago visit to her grandparents. It had been a short visit, of course—Caroline’s mother had done everything possible to cut off her own country roots. But Caroline remembered her grandfather, a big, red-faced man who’d taken her fishing one still morning. And her girlish reluctance to bait a hook until her grandfather had told her that old worm was just waiting to catch himself a big fat fish.

Her trembling thrill when her line had jerked, and the sense of awe and accomplishment when they’d carried three husky catfish back home.

Her grandmother, a wiry stick of a woman with steel-gray hair, had fried up the catch in a heavy black skillet. Though Caroline’s mother had refused to taste a bite, Caroline herself had eaten hungrily, a frail, tow-headed six-year-old with long, slender fingers and big green eyes.

When the house came into view, she smiled. It hadn’t changed much. The paint was flaking off the shutters and the grass was ankle-high, but it was still a trim two-story house with a covered porch made for sitting and a stone chimney that leaned just slightly to the left.

She felt her eyes sting and blinked at the tears. Foolish to feel sad. Her grandparents had lived long, contented lives. Foolish to feel guilty. When her grandfather died two years before, Caroline had been in Madrid, in the middle of a concert tour, and swamped by obligations.
It simply hadn’t been possible to make the trip back for his funeral.

And she’d tried, really tried, to tempt her grandmother to the city, where Caroline could have flown easily between tour dates for a visit.

But Edith hadn’t budged; she’d laughed at the notion of leaving the house where she’d come as a new bride some seventy years before, the house where her children had been born and raised, the house where she’d lived her whole life.

And when she died, Caroline had been in a Toronto hospital, recovering from exhaustion. She hadn’t known her grandmother was gone until a week after the funeral.

So it was foolish to feel guilt.

But as she sat in her car, with the air-conditioning blowing gently on her face, she was swamped with the emotion.

“I’m sorry,” she said aloud to the ghosts. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here. That I was never here.”

On a sigh, she combed a hand through her sleek cap of honey-blond hair. It did no good to sit in the car and brood. She needed to take in her things, go through the house, settle herself. The place was hers now, and she meant to keep it.

When she opened the car door, the heat stole the oxygen from her
lungs.
Gasping against its force, she lifted her violin case from the backseat. She was already wilting when she carried the instrument and a heavy box of sheet music to the porch.

It took three more trips to the car—lugging suitcases, two bags of groceries which she’d stopped to pick up in a little market thirty miles north, and finally, her reel-to-reel tape recorder—before she was done.

Once she had all her possessions lined up, she took out the keys. Each one was tagged: front door, back door, root cellar, strongbox, Ford pick-up. They jangled together like musical notes as Caroline selected the front-door key.

The door squeaked, as old doors should, and opened on the dim dust of disuse.

She took up the violin first. It was certainly more important than any of the groceries.

A little lost, and for the first time lonely, she walked inside.

The hallway led straight back to where she knew the kitchen would be. To the left, stairs climbed, hooking to a right angle after the third tread. The banister was dark, sturdy oak, layered now with a fine cloak of dust.

There was a table just beneath the stairs, where a heavy black dial phone sat beside an empty vase. Caroline laid down her case on it and got busy.

She carried groceries back to the kitchen with its yellow walls and white, glass-fronted cabinets. Because the house was oven-hot, she put them away first, relieved that the refrigerator was sparkling clean.

She’d been told some neighbor women had come in to wash and scrub after the funeral. Caroline could see that this country courtesy was true. Beneath the dust of two months, beyond the lacy webs that industrious spiders had woven in corners, was the faint, lingering smell of Lysol.

She walked slowly back to the front hall, her heels echoing on the hardwood. She peeked into the sitting room with its petit point cushions and big RCA console television that looked like an ancient artifact. Into the living room, where faded cabbage roses climbed the walls and “company” furniture was ghosted under dust covers. Then her grandfather’s den with its case of hunting rifles and target pistols, its big easy chair, ragged at the arms.

Hefting her suitcases, she started upstairs to choose her room.

Both sentiment and practicality had her settling on her grandparents’ bedroom. The heavy four-poster and wedding-ring quilt seemed to offer comfort. The cedar chest at its foot might hold secrets. The tiny violets and roses twined on the walls would soothe.

Caroline set her valises aside and walked to the narrow glass door that led to the high, open porch. From there, she could see her grandmother’s roses and perennials
struggling against the weeds. She could hear the lap of water against some rock or downed log behind the tangle of live oaks and Spanish moss. And in the distance, through the haze of heat, she saw the brown ribbon of water that was the powerful Mississippi.

There were birds calling, a symphony of sound through the hot air—jays and sparrows, crows and larks. And perhaps the gargled call of wild turkey.

She dreamed there for a moment, a delicately formed woman, a shade too thin, with exquisite hands and shadowed eyes.

For a moment, the view, the fragrances, the sounds, faded away. She was in her mother’s sitting room, with the whispering tick of the ormulu clock, the scent of Chanel. Very soon they would be leaving for her first recital.

“We expect the best from you, Caroline.” Her mother’s voice was smooth and slow and left no room for comment. “We expect you to
be
the best. Nothing else is worth aiming for. Do you understand?”

Caroline’s toes were curled nervously in her glossy Mary Janes. She was only five. “Yes, ma’am.”

In the parlor now, her arms aching after two hours of practice. The sun so bright and golden outside. And she could see a robin perched in the tree. He made her giggle and pause.

“Caroline!” Her mother’s voice flowed down the stairs. “You still have an hour of practice left. How do you expect to be ready for this tour if you have no discipline? Now start again.”

“I’m sorry.” With a sigh, Caroline lifted the violin that to her twelve-year-old shoulders was beginning to feel like a lead weight.

Backstage, fighting off the queasy nerves of opening night. And tired, so tired from the endless rehearsals, preparations, traveling. How long had she been on this treadmill now? Was she eighteen, twenty?

“Caroline, for heaven’s sake, put on more blusher. You look like death.” That impatient, hammering voice, taut fingers taking her chin and lifting it. “Why can’t you at least show some enthusiasm? Do you know how hard
your father and I have worked to get you where you are? How much we’ve sacrificed? And here you are, ten minutes before curtain, brooding into the mirror.”

“I’m sorry.”

She had always been sorry.

Lying in a hospital bed in Toronto, sick, exhausted, ashamed.

“What do you mean you’ve canceled the rest of the tour?” Her mother’s tense, furious face looming over hers.

“I can’t finish it. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry! What good is sorry? You’re making a shambles of your career, you’ve inconvenienced Luis unpardonably. I wouldn’t be surprised if he broke your engagement as well as cutting you off professionally.”

“He was with someone else,” Caroline said weakly. “Just before curtain I saw him—in the dressing room. He was with someone else.”

“That’s nonsense. And if it isn’t, you have no one but yourself to blame. The way you’ve been acting lately—walking around like a ghost, canceling interviews, refusing to attend parties. After all I’ve done for you, this is how you repay the debt. How do you expect me to deal with the press, with the speculation, with the mess you’ve left me in?”

“I don’t know.” It helped to close her eyes, to close them and shut it all away. “I’m sorry. I just can’t do it anymore.”

No, Caroline thought, opening her eyes again. She just couldn’t do it anymore. She couldn’t be what everyone else wanted her to be. Not now. Not ever again. Was she selfish, ungrateful, spoiled—all those hateful words her mother had hurled at her? It didn’t seem to matter now. All that mattered was that she was here.

Ten miles away, Tucker Longstreet streaked into the heart of Innocence, kicking up dust and scaring the spit out of Jed Larsson’s fat beagle Nuisance, who’d been
resting his bones on the pad of concrete beneath the striped awning of the dry goods store.

Caroline Waverly would have understood the dog’s distress when he opened one eye to see the shiny red car barreling straight for him and skidding to a stop a bare eighteen inches from his resting place.

With a yipe, the dog gained his feet and took himself off to safer ground.

Tucker chuckled and called to Nuisance with a click and a whistle, but the dog kept moving. Nuisance hated that red car with a passion so great he never even ventured near enough to pee on its tires.

Tucker dumped his keys in his pocket. He fully intended to get Della’s rice and Cokes and toilet water, then head back to stretch out on the hammock again— where he figured a smart man belonged on a hot, airless afternoon. But he spotted his sister’s car, tilted across two parking spaces in front of the Chat ’N Chew.

It occurred to him that the drive had made him thirsty, and he could do with a tall glass of lemonade. And possibly a hunk of chilled huckleberry pie.

Later, he’d spend a lot of time regretting that small detour.

The Longstreets owned the Chat ’N Chew, just as they owed the Wash & Dry Laundromat, the Innocence Boarding House, the Feed and Grain, the Hunters’ Friend Gun Shop, and a dozen or so rental properties. The Longstreets were wise enough—or lazy enough—to have managers for their businesses. Dwayne took a mild interest in the rental houses, cruising along to each on the first of the month to collect checks or listen to excuses, and note down a list of needed repairs.

But Tucker kept the books, whether he wanted to or not. Once when he’d bitched about it long enough, Josie had taken them over. She’d screwed them up so royally, it had taken Tucker days to set them to rights again.

He didn’t mind so much, really. Bookkeeping was something you could do in the cool of the evening, with a cold drink at your elbow. His head for figures made it an annoying chore rather than a difficult one.

The Chat ’N Chew was one of Tucker’s favorite places. The diner had one of those big, wide-pane windows that was forever dotted with posters announcing bake sales, school plays, and auctions.

Inside, the floor was made of linoleum tiles, yellowed with age and dusted with brown flecks that looked like fly spots. The booths were rugged red vinyl, an improvement over the ripped and tattered brown that Tucker had replaced just six months before. The red was already fading to orange.

Over the years, people had carved messages into the laminated tabletops. Sort of a Chat ’N Chew tradition. Initials were a big favorite, along with hearts and stick figures, but occasionally someone was inspired to hack in
HEY!
or
UP YOURS!
Or in the case of one grumpy individual,
EAT SHIT AND DIE
.

Earleen Renfrew, who managed the establishment, had been so put out by that suggestion, Tucker had been forced to borrow an electric buffer from the hardware store and smudge out the offending words.

Each booth had its own individual juke where you could turn the knob and flip over selections—still three for a quarter. Because Earleen favored country tunes, so did the juke, but Tucker had managed to sneak in a few cuts of rock or R & B from the fifties.

The big counter was lined with a dozen stools, all topped with the same fading red vinyl. A clear three-tiered dome held that day’s offering of pies. Tucker’s gaze lighted on the huckleberry with pure delight.

Exchanging waves and “heys” with a scattering of customers, he made his way through the grease- and smoke-tinged air to where his sister perched at the counter. Deep in discussion with Earleen, Josie gave her brother an absent pat on the arm and kept talking.

“And so I said to her, Justine, if you’re going to marry a man like Will Shiver, all you’ve got to do to stay happy is buy yourself a padlock for his fly and make sure you’re the only one with a key. He may wet himself now and again, but that’s all he’s going to do.”

Earleen gave an appreciative cackle and wiped a
few wet rings from the counter. “Why she’d want to marry a no-account like Will’s beyond me.”

“Honey, he’s a
regular tiger
in bed.” Josie winked slyly. “So they say. Hey, Tucker.” She turned to give her brother a smacking kiss before wriggling her fingers in front of his face. “I just got my nails done. Hotshot Red. What do you think?”